Alternative Culture (YU1980s) in a Techno-Historical Perspective

'Alternative' often has a strong political and mobilising charge. It leads to the detection, articulation and practices of other and different possibilities. In socio-political realm, the question of the alternative and alternative culture is often understood in the context of the relationship between mainstream culture and subcultural, marginal, socially critical, youth/rebellious practices that problematise, question, and undermine the existing situation, but at the same time necessarily remain in a constitutive relationship with the problematised 'mainstream'.

In this sense, the lecture asks: What is an alternative? What are the characteristics of the historical and technological circumstances in which alternative cultural practices emerged? How does the alternative function in the perspective of Yugoslav socialism? And, centrally, how can we define and analyse alternative cultural practices of the Yugoslav 1980s?

To outlines possible answers, the question of the alternative is situated in the historical, political and technological processes and changes that marked the period of modernity and focuses on the conceptual aspects of the phenomenon, the infrastructural conditions for the establishment of (political) communities, and the intertwining of alternative culture with politics and art. The central part of the lecture will be devoted to a conceptual analysis of the emergence and practice of alternative culture in the 1980s Slovenia, in the context of simultaneous discussions about subculture and counterculture in the intersection with socio-political changes and new artistic practices and expressions.

Martin Pogačar is a cultural studies scholar with a PhD in memory and digital media and an MA in Central and South-Eastern European Studies. His research interests include media memory studies, philosophy of technology, as well as Yugoslav popular culture and industrial heritage, as well as the history of technology in socialist Yugoslavia. His recent publications include: "E/Affect Agropop: how pop and joke made people resonate in the 1980s", and Affect's social lives: post-Yugoslav reflections; co-edited volume Social impact in arts and culture: the diverse lives of a concept; "A microphone in a chandelier: how a secret recording sparks mnemonic imagination and affect." Memory studies; Media archaeologies, micro-archives and storytelling: re-presenting the past.